The 2nd of January is Oatmeal Day, at least according to The Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom. The Quaker Oats Company backs them up somewhat, in saying that all of January is Oatmeal Month.

You won't want to miss Shortbread Day! This is a good day to dispose of the last of the Christmas Shortbread still hanging around by unloading it on friends and neighbours, or by cramming into the lunchboxes of your unsuspecting loved ones. If you're a fan of Shortbread and happen to have spent the holidays in a shortbread-deprived stupor, then maybe it's a good day to make or buy yourself some at post-Christmas prices and satisfy your craving, before it disappears from store shelves completely for the year, making you all antsy by July (unless you're in Scotland, where it's made the year rou

The 7th of January has been designated -- by sources unknown -- as the day to commemorate the publication in 1896 of the Boston Cooking School Cookbook. ‡ Written by Fannie Merritt Farmer, the cookbook would remain the definitive cookbook in the American kitchen until the Joy of Cooking started to displace it in the 1940s.

When's the last time you had Strawberry Ice Cream? It used to be part of the triumvirate of flavours that ruled supreme -- vanilla, chocolate and strawberry -- that even appeared altogether in some versions of what North Americans called Neapolitan ice cream. Now, though, Strawberry Ice Cream has been relegated to the attic where old flavours get packed away, hauled out only from time to time.

Apple Trees will be wassailed tonight in Carhampton, Somerset, as part of a centuries if not millennia old tradition of wassailing across England. Wassailing provided a fun evening and a time for revelry after Christmas and New Year were over and the dark, cold nights of winter had set in.

The 19th of January is Popcorn Day -- even though the American Popcorn Board hasn't got a clue who said that it was, and even though National Popcorn Poppin' Month is in October. The Popcorn Month was actually officially proclaimed in 1999, by the American Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman (though such proclamations are only valid for the year in which they are made), because October coincides with the popcorn harvest.

What a day for cheese lovers. Treat yourself to an old favourite, or fall in love with a new one! Cheese Day enthusiasts like to point out that Cheese Day is really all about anything cheesy in life, and that it's the best day of the year to watch a really cheesy movie.

Blonde Brownie Day falls handily in the third week of January, just in case you didn't already have an excuse to fall off your New Year's Resolution diet. Besides, with the holidays just having ended, you might still be sick of chocolate, but when's the last time you had a blonde brownie? Think of those dense, chewy squares of cake...

On this day, the 24th of January, in 1922, Christian Kent Nelson of Onawa, Iowa, along with his business partner Russell C. Stover, obtained US patent number 1,404,539 for the "Eskimo Pie" ice cream bar.

This day celebrates the birthday of the man considered by many to be Scotland's national poet, their beloved Robert Burns. Burns was born 25 January 1759 in Alloway, Scotland, the eldest of 7 children.

Australia Day is an official public holiday throughout Australia, promoted by the government with fireworks and performances. It occurs for Australians at the height of their summer, though sadly it also marks for Australian school children the end of their summer holidays.